In the ideology of sentimentalism, physical sensation integrates the parts of the body into a whole, and the fragmented members of the body politic into a social community. However, intense pain is always an individual experience. It not only isolates us from other people, but is also isolates us from our own bodies: pain renders our bodies out of control. Moreover, pain attacks our very notion of self by threatening to render us unconscious, and unable to perceive that self. This complex of problems became especially acute for late eighteenth-century writers, as they tried to reconcile their sympathy for the French Revolution with the intense pain that the Revolution signified. What they articulated was a process by which the self initially identifies with the pained body of the other, but then appropriates that pain to make it one's own, thereby isolating the self from infectious Revolutionary sympathies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.39416 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Bruhm, Steven |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of English.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001318481, proquestno: NN80366, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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